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Hi and Welcome to Forum, dear Iana.Hi all, my first post, so here goes, I was intending to try to write a book, a fiction novel which depicts the life on a ww2 airbase, the staff, the hardships and about the unnoticed hero's that kept the pilots in the air. To date I have not seen a book like this. However I feel I have left the writing too long and all of those involved have faded away.
Having read many books on ww2 flying, to date I have not seen any reference to doing damage repairs, i.e. repairing bullet holes etc.
I know that in the aircraft carriers they carried components, hung of the hanger roof, such as elevators, tail-planes and wings, so I am thinking that no smallish airframe repairs were done, rather a component was changed over, or the aircraft sent to a reapir facilty, or just scrapped.
I suspect that the maintenance crew were only just able to do a turn around service to get the aircraft back into the air, with out worrying about small repairs.
Any thoughts on this?
Iana welcome to the forum. It is easy to see an aircraft as just a thing that goes in the air. WW2 saw planes change from cloth covered modified bi planes to stressed skin structures. The Spitfire and Hurricane look similar but were completely different in terms of repair.Thankyou buffnut453, but you have told me nothing I did not already know. So it would seem minor and/or larger airframe repairs were not done at the field. Maybe they just de-burred and slapped a fabric patch over. It is possible each crew carried a "tucker pop riveter", or "cherry lock" gun, and did repairs this way, but as of now I have not read any reference to this, nor seen any photos to show such repairs happening.
Hi dear Iana.Thankyou Artesh, for your welcome. I see you are involved with a military museum, I am currently looking at doing some voluntary work in the same. My younger days my time was spent doing aircraft maintenance, as well as repairs. I also did some crash salvage jobs where we did some fairly major repairs to aircraft in the jungle, which were then flown back to base.
damaged planes were never returned to the factory. In the early years of the war, crashed allied aircraft were salvaged whenever possibly, to provide spare parts that were in short supply. Allied pilots were instructed to crash land as close to their home airfields as possible, so that the planes could be stripped for parts. Teams were also dispatched to distant wrecks to recover guns, engines and instruments. Later in the war, they scrapped planes for little reason. The newer planes were improved.
During WWII a lot of the B-17 maintenance was done overnight on the hardstand at the 303rdbg. We only had one hanger. Slow timing engines was an on going activity. Four hours in the air at a given RPM on the repaired engine. The maintenance crews did an excellent job under adverse conditions of keeping the aircraft air worthy.damaged planes were never returned to the factory. In the early years of the war, crashed allied aircraft were salvaged whenever possibly, to provide spare parts that were in short supply. Allied pilots were instructed to crash land as close to their home airfields as possible, so that the planes could be stripped for parts. Teams were also dispatched to distant wrecks to recover guns, engines and instruments. Later in the war, they scrapped planes for little reason. The newer planes were improved.
I remember seeing one emergency field that had a runway you could land on in any direction. Was it one of the three mentioned?I always wondered what went on at the emergency landing fields of Carnaby, Woodbridge and Manston. Many landings were due to fog or lack of fuel, but that still leaves thousands of forced landings with varying problems and all sorts of aircraft, they must have had a huge scrapyard but also quite extensive facilities to get planes back in the air.